


i found a martyr (with his educated eyes and his head between my thighs)

by voxofthevoid



Series: we’re not lovers (we’re just strangers with the same damn hunger) [1]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alpha Steve Rogers, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Captain America Steve Rogers/Modern Bucky Barnes, Dubious Consent, Knotting, M/M, Marathon Sex, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Omega Bucky Barnes, Painful Sex, SHIELD Agent Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:01:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27700409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voxofthevoid/pseuds/voxofthevoid
Summary: “Remind me again why I’m doing this.”“Because the defrosted pillar of truth, justice, and the American way woke up and went into rut,” Clint recites dully, incredulity at this turn of events having faded into resignation out of sheer self-preservation. “It’s his first rut in, what, seventy years? And suppressants aren’t working. It might kill him.”Bucky grimaces. He doesn’t know what it says about his life that it has landed him ass-up, face-down in these circumstances.He’s pretty sure he’s imagining the warmth spreading through his veins. Heat inducers need time to work. But between this and the suppressant-neutralizers, he doesn’t even want to think of what his chemical makeup looks like right now.Will Rogers be able to smell it on him? Would it even matter? Captain America or not, the guy’s an alpha in a long-delayed rut. All he’ll care about is having a tight hole around his knot, and Bucky’s got that dubious honor.-In which Steve's dramatic awakening in S.H.I.E.L.D. custody happens a little differently, with far-reaching consequences.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: we’re not lovers (we’re just strangers with the same damn hunger) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2025824
Comments: 374
Kudos: 1602





	1. i found the savior (i don't think he remembers)

**Author's Note:**

> I should maybe stop churning out new series when I finally mark one as complete...and yet!
> 
> This is fully written. It has 3 parts in total, divided into two, three, and one chapters, respectively.
> 
> This chapter has all the trope trappings of heat/rut sex, so expect very dubious consent. We also have completely consensual, though often ill-advised, sex in the later parts too, so if that transition bothers you, give this a pass.
> 
> As always, you can find me and talk to me on my [tumblr](https://voxofthevoid.tumblr.com/)!

“Remind me again why I’m doing this.”

Clint sighs but doesn’t look up from where he’s trying to find a vein in Bucky’s sole flesh arm. Clint’s kind of shit at it, but he’s familiar and an omega and pretty much the only person Bucky can stand right now because his employers shot him up full of suppressant-neutralizers and his hormones are going haywire.

“Because the defrosted pillar of truth, justice, and the American way woke up and went into rut,” Clint recites dully, incredulity at this turn of events having faded into resignation out of sheer self-preservation. Bucky gets it. “It’s his first rut in, what, seventy years? And suppressants aren’t working. It might kill him.”

“Why me?” Bucky laments.

He doesn’t call it whining; this is justified, dammit.

Clint isn’t fazed.

“Because you’re our only enhanced omega. Our only enhanced anything, actually. If we send some poor, normal fucker into that containment room, Cap might just kill them with his dick.”

Bucky grimaces. He doesn’t know what it says about his life that it has landed him ass-up, face-down in these circumstances.

Clint finally manages to find a vein. Bucky watches the plunger drop. He’s pretty sure he’s imagining the warmth spreading through his veins. Heat inducers need time to work—not a lot but definitely more than a second. Between this and the neutralizers, he doesn’t even want to think of what his chemical makeup looks like right now.

Will Rogers be able to smell it on him? Would it even matter? Captain America or not, the guy’s an alpha in a long-delayed rut. All he’ll care about is having a tight hole around his knot, and Bucky’s got that dubious honor.

“You did agree to this,” Clint points out mildly. He swabs gently at Bucky’s elbow with some cotton. “You can still back out.”

“I’m going to be in induced heat in ten minutes. If that American asshole doesn’t fuck me, _I_ might die.”

Alright, that’s an exaggeration. A shitton of studies have proven that induced heats are stronger and more demanding than regular ones, but Bucky won’t die, unlike Rogers. That’s why he’s there though. If they could have just let Rogers ride it out with his hand or some toys, they would have. But they can’t.

Bucky wasn’t in station when they woke Rogers and fresh hell broke loose. His pheromones triggered heats in most of the omegas in that wing, even those who were bonded or on suppressants, and it was a good thing the poor guy had enough sense then to barricade himself in his room-slash-prison because they’d have had pandemonium otherwise.

That was five hours ago. Since then, Rogers has been lost to the rut and the facility damn near evacuated. And Fury pulled Bucky out of D.C. and called him here to get fucked. Literally.

Jesus.

“Hey.” Clint sits beside him and puts his arm around Bucky. It’s a little awkward but comforting all the same. “It’ll be alright. We won’t let you get hurt.”

“I know. Just—this is weird, alright? And I mean it. Audio surveillance only. No visuals.”

“Fury doesn’t like it,” Clint says frankly. “But he’ll make sure of it. And I’ll make sure he’ll make sure of it. Just in case.”

He winks, and Bucky absurdly feels a little better.

-

He’s led to Rogers’s room like a lamb to the slaughter.

Bucky shakes his head. Impending heats make him dramatic. Clint is with him, but there’s an eerie lack of personnel in the long, winding corridors between the medical wing and the containment cells. The atmosphere is better suited to having some cuck-crazy supervillain in holding rather than one rutting alpha. But then, Rogers’s serum-laced pheromones are nothing to scoff at. Bucky’s body reacts, nipples hardening, cock throbbing, not that it needs much encouragement with the heat inducers working its magic.

It's Clint’s reaction that fascinates him. He’s bonded to two alphas, and neither Nat nor Laura is weak, but even he’s biting his lip and looking distinctly flustered by the time they reach Rogers’s door.

He goes to open the door, and Bucky stops him.

“No. Leave first.”

“But—”

“No buts. I appreciate your company, and it did help calm me down. But if it’s this bad despite the fucking scent-proof door, then I can’t even imagine what’s gonna happen when we open this thing.”

“He’s restrained,” Clint says weakly.

“He’s not what I’m afraid of. I can afford to lose it and go heat-crazy. That’s the whole point of this shit. You can’t. Scram.”

Gratitude wars with hesitance on Clint’s face as he stands there staring at Bucky, but he nods after a minute and starts to back away.

“Good luck. Remember, you’re safe. We’ll come get you—”

“Yes, yes, just _go_.”

Clint huffs but turns around and marches off at a pace that says he really wants to run but won’t because he doesn’t want to freak Bucky out. It’s too late, but Bucky appreciates the sentiment.

He turns to the door once Clint is out of sight. The access pad looks far more intimidating than it has any right to. Bucky wants to put this off, but between the injections and Rogers’s scent, he’s on the cusp of heat, and he might as well be inside when it hits.

He punches in the code and scans his thumb and drags in a deep, reassuring breath as the door slides open with an ominous hiss.

Bucky takes one step inside. His first inhale makes him stagger, hole _gushing_. He stands there, stunned to stillness, one arm braced on the wall as warm liquid trickles down his thighs. He takes another breath, can’t help it, and his ass clenches around nothing.

He casts a wild glance back at the door. It’s already closed.

A loud growl reverberates in the room.

Rogers is restrained. They moved him to this cell in the first half-hour of his rut, when he was more or less in his right mind. It’s plain and sparse, with a big bed in the middle and a toilet in one corner. Both of Rogers’s arms are locked in steel cuffs attached to the wall. It doesn’t look very comfortable, and Bucky feels a twinge of sympathy that he crushes. Rogers agreed to this. He knew the risks.

And Bucky is definitely glad the guy’s locked down tight because the way he’s looking at Bucky says that if Rogers had this way, Bucky would be getting fucked against the wall right now.

His gut clenches at the thought. His hole is dripping wet. His body, at least, wouldn’t mind that turn of events, but his heat hasn’t yet hit, and Bucky is sadly still in his right mind.

But he can’t help looking at what he’s been avoiding until now. Rogers is naked, and his dick juts out obscenely between his legs, hard and flushed a violent red that looks painful. That flash of sympathy again and this time, Bucky can’t will it away. Rogers spent the last five hours chained like this without even his own hand for relief. Bucky tries to imagine being in heat and unable to cram at least his fingers inside him. Horror is what makes his gut clench this time.

Bucky stumbles forward from the wall. He shakily strips out of the loose sweatpants Clint gave him to wear. It leaves him naked, and this time, Rogers’s growl has intent behind it. He’s staring at Bucky’s soft cock, which fills a little at the attention. Traitor.

“Captain,” Bucky greets.

He’s surprised when that makes Rogers actually look at his face. Rogers himself has a very nice face. He’s jacked to all hell and pretty to boot, the kind of alpha Bucky would have happily taken for a ride if they’d met in some bar. As it is, his physical appeal is dulled a little by the situation.

“I’m Bucky,” he says, soldiering on despite the incomprehension on Rogers’s face. “I’m here to…help you.”

This is starting to feel more and more like a really wild porno.

Bucky should probably get on the bed. Get on Rogers, actually. His cock sure looks inviting—

He pries his eyes away from Rogers’s dick, ignoring the pulsing heat between his legs. It’s close, he can feel it, but it’s not there yet, and Bucky’s going to make the best of these lucid moments while he can.

“Probably shouldn’t keep calling you Captain,” Bucky tells the man on the bed, who clearly has no fucks to give what he’s called. But he might remember this later. And Bucky wants to keep talking, even if to just fool himself that this is totally normal, yes sir. “Or Rogers. We’re about to be past surnames soon. Steve then. Can I call you Steve?”

The only answer he gets is another growl, lower this time, the sort of alpha noise that drives Bucky wild in bed. He’s not in bed, yet, but his asshole’s sure happy to hear it.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Bucky grits out, clenching his thighs together like that will make them less wet.

There’s a building heat in his body, familiar but not quite, just _off_ enough to leave him disoriented. Bucky likes heats just fine as long as they’re not interfering with his work, but he’s heard horror stories about triggered heats. The S.H.I.E.L.D. doctor told Clint who told Bucky that this cocktail is safe, but he knows his body and knows this isn’t how it should be.

There’s something unnatural about the onset. It should be a slow, gradual build, not this—this wave.

Bucky staggers forward as his stomach cramps, crashing to his knees at the pain. It only lasts a few seconds, but he’s left panting through clenched teeth in the aftermath.

He looks up.

Steve is silent, staring down at Bucky. There’s concern on his face, but Bucky can’t tell whether it’s genuine or more alpha bullshit. Probably the latter. The poor sonuvabitch hasn’t been in possession of his mental faculties for hours.

It strikes him then that this is even less fair to Steve than to Bucky. He knew what he was agreeing to. Steve’s rut hit too fast for him to do anything more than hide in his room and let beta agents escort him to a better cell without killing anyone. He hasn’t consented to this.

“I’m sorry about this,” Bucky says, still on the floor, panting through the heat flooding his system. “Just, uh, oh Christ, I can’t—think, think of it as desperate measures. When you’re back, when—fuck, fuck, shit, I—”

Bucky falls onto all fours, limbs weakening as his scent spikes.

Steve _roars_.

There’s a loud, wrenching sound. Bucky doesn’t realize what’s happening until there are legs in his visions and strong arms hauling him up and tossing him into the bed. He lands on his stomach, bouncing a little, and it’s instinctive to try and scramble upright, but that’s a mistake. There’s a thick body pushing itself between his legs, rough hands palming his ass, and that’s when what happened finally sinks in.

The metal cuffs dangle from the wall, shattered.

Steve spreads Bucky’s ass, and Bucky yells a panicked “Wait—”

A hot, wet tongue laps at his hole, and Bucky’s elbows buckle. He howls into the sheets, drowning in the sudden, searing pleasure. It’s too much, too fast, but Steve thrusts his tongue inside, still growling, the sound trembling against Bucky’s hole, and he can’t help pushing back against it, grinding his ass against Steve’s mouth.

He's wet, fucking gushing, and the tongue sloppily fucking him isn’t _enough_.

And then it stops.

Bucky cries out, angry and helpless, and his unthinking attempt to move—to push back, turn around, do something—earns him a hand at his nape, shoving his face into the bed. It leaves him with his ass in the air, fucking _presenting_ , and that gets him dripping too.

He has a moment to think, half-hysterically, that this isn’t how it’s supposed to go. Steve was tied up and harmless, and Bucky was supposed to start them off easy—ride him, take his knot, maybe untie him once he calmed down from the frenzy. Best laid plans, and here he is, pinned down and spread wide like some alpha’s dream feast.

Steve’s hand tightens on his neck. His weight shifts, and Bucky knows what’s coming, but the scorching press of a cock to his hole still makes him gasp. It’s huge, something he’s been carefully not thinking about, and Bucky’s wet but not prepared, not nearly enough stretched, and he can’t, he _can’t_ —

It pries him open.

Bucky shouts, the sound muffled by a faceful of mattress. He tries to squirm out from under Steve, get away, buy himself time, something, anything, but the hand on his throat holds him down without effort, and he’s got no choice but to keen into the sheets as that monster cock tears into him.

He drags in a deep, shuddering breath and gasps at their mingled scent. It’s the kind of shit meant to wreak holy havoc on your libido, and it works. He’s wet, so wet, more than he ever remembers being, heat or no heat, and it’s the only thing keeping Steve’s oversized dick from splitting him in half. The hand holding him down shifts its grip, an errant thumb brushing his scent glands.

Bucky whimpers and clenches hard around the cock pushing into him.

Steve stops. Someone’s keening nonstop, and Bucky think it’s him until his head clears and he realizes it’s Steve. It sounds like it hurts, like he’s in pain, and Bucky can’t help it, crooning softly and reaching back to blindly grope at whatever part of Steve he can reach. It’s just instinct; a hurting alpha is dangerous, but knowing it’s stupid motherfucking biology doesn’t ease the intensity of Bucky’s reaction when Steve stops keening and groans instead, free hand gripping Bucky’s.

His body relaxes, turns slick and loose, and Steve bottoms out in a swift, fiery slide.

Bucky doesn’t make a sound. He can’t. Air’s trapped in his throat, and his body’s a quivering wreck.

He’s never been this fucking _full_ , and Steve hasn’t even knotted him yet.

He thinks, then, of calling out, telling Clint—or Fury, someone—to get in here and get him the fuck out, because enhanced or not, he’s not going to survive this. It’s already too much, and Steve’s hasn’t even started moving, stock still inside Bucky as he drags in deep gulps of air. He can’t imagine more, can’t imagine being knotted on that thing, and he should get out of here and suffer through his heat in his cozy apartment and never, ever see Steve Rogers again if he even survives and—

It’s not sympathy for Steve that stops him. It’s not even a sense of duty.

It’s the cock that starts moving, the angled thrust that screws along Bucky’s prostate, and the sheer, gut-clenching pleasure that slams into him. 

The overwhelming fullness sinks sharp hooks into Bucky’s gut, but it’s heat-laced want that spills from the wounds. It’s still too much, it’ll always be too much, but Bucky’s got a body made to survive things that would kill most humans, and this isn’t different.

He doesn’t really get to enjoy it before it’s over.

The swell of Steve’s knot doesn’t surprise him, not when he knows how long they left him without relief or release, but Bucky only has a moment to acknowledge that S.H.I.E.L.D. kinda fucked up before the pain hits.

He’s split it two, burned to the bone, and he knew Steve’s knot would be a monster, he _knew_ , but the reality is a sudden, searing shock.

Bucky sobs, clawing at the sheets and wrenching away from the hand on his nape, but it just fists in his hair instead, keeping him there on his belly as Steve damn near kills him with his swelling knot.

It grows and grows and _doesn’t stop_ —

Bucky can’t, he can’t—

Steve grinds his hips in deep, and Bucky screams, and they’re locked together, and the knot hasn’t stopped growing, and Bucky can’t breathe, it’s all too much, his blood’s on fire, he’s cleaved in two, god, it hurts it hurts it _hurts_ —

Steve stills.

Liquid fire drenches his insides, shocking Bucky into utter silence. It doesn’t—it doesn’t end, Steve’s dick jerks and his knot pops, filling Bucky with so much come that he feels bloated in seconds, all of it sloshing around inside him, plugged up with nowhere to go.

There’s a soft sigh. The hand holding Bucky’s and the one clenched in his hair loosen their grips. Bucky doesn’t move, can’t if he tried. It’s all he can do to breathe.

It’s so much.

 _Cap might just kill them with his dick_ , Clint said, and it was a real fear, Bucky’s sure of that, but it’s just that they don’t know enough about the serum, not that they actually thought Captain America would impale someone on his dick.

Bucky knows better now.

He turns his head to the side, and it’s still hard to breathe, but he drags in deep breaths and tries to blink the spots out of his vision. Everything aches. He tries to move, just a little, but the knot plugging him up is huge and hot, and he can’t help clenching all around it. He screams, but it dies into a whimper when Steve groans and tries to work his hips, grinding his knot against the nerves around Bucky’s hole. It hurts, but it works too, pleasure spiking sharply through the pain. Bucky spasms around Steve and drips some more, but he can’t come like this, even though that would put them both out of their misery.

Steve rolls his hips again, and Bucky’s eyes roll back in his head. The sheets tear under his left hand and the right one digs blunt nails into Steve’s palm.

“It hurts,” he says, barely recognizing his voice. “Stop moving, please, it hurts.”

Bucky doesn’t know if it’s the words or his tone that penetrates.

Steve untangles his fingers from Bucky’s and lets go of his neck. Despite everything, the sudden absence of those points of contact tears a pitiful whine out of Bucky, but Steve touches him before the sound quite makes it out, large, warm hands stroking up Bucky’s back and along his shoulders, their touch firm but gentle. In some twisted way, it’s a more shocking gesture than anything that’s happened so far.

And Steve’s crooning too, the same sound Bucky made earlier, lapping gently at some small, animal part of him and coaxing him to relax in spite of himself.

Slowly, so slowly that Bucky holds his breath and feels his lungs burn, Steve lowers his body. His knot tugs at Bucky’s rim, digs into all those soft, hollowed parts of him that were made to cling the blunt swell of a knot. It’s not pleasure, not yet, but it’s not pain either anymore. Just sensation, slithering up his spine.

Steve’s weight settles on him. He's heavy. Bucky’s heartbeat starts to slow.

There’s instinct, and then there’s this, bodies burning beyond control.

Steve’s breath stirs Bucky’s hair, tickles a tiny strip of skin. He makes a small noise and tilts his head a little, and it’s not quite invitation, but he doesn’t protest the rough drag of lips along his skin. Steve’s got dry lips, chapped almost to bleeding. Hard bits of dead skin scrapes along his throat. It makes him shiver.

Bucky likes to kiss his alphas before they fuck. He likes, sometimes, to let a kiss decide whether he’ll take someone home.

He can’t fathom turning his head enough to let their mouths meets. He can’t fathom moving at all. Steve’s knot has still got him struggling to breathe when he focuses on it too much. It’s a miracle that it fits in him. He can’t imagine coming around it.

He knows he’ll find out.

Steve’s still crooning, softer now, closer to Bucky’s ears. It keeps him limp, relaxed, and as long as he doesn’t move, doesn’t even stir, and Bucky’s doesn’t really mind. It could be worse.

He wonders what Clint and the rest think about the sudden silence. He wonders how loud he’ll need to scream before Fury will send help.

Wonders if he’ll send it at all, unable or unwilling to distinguish between an omega caught in the throes of heat and one screaming for help. It’s a familiar enough story. Maybe he should have allowed video surveillance, but he doubts that would have changed minds that don’t want to be changed.

He’s being unfair, probably. He doesn’t trust Fury with anything but the bigger picture, but he does trust Clint.

Lips brush his ear. Bucky jolts and regrets it when his insides turn molten. He can’t bite back the whimpers, it’s all he can do to keep his reaction contained to something so quiet, and Steve—

Steve kisses his ear, the delicate skin behind it, and drags his lips into Bucky’s hair. He makes shushing noises, and one of his hands strokes along Bucky’s side, up and down and up and down, and Bucky realizes then that Steve’s got his other hand braced on the bed, keeping his full weight off Bucky.

It’s more consideration that he expected, not because he thinks Steve’s a bad guy—he can’t be, he’s Captain America—but because Bucky assumed he’d be too far gone to remember to care.

And he is far gone, no doubt about that, but here he is, trying to comfort Bucky with lips and hands.

It helps, surprisingly.

Not for long though. Steve’s knot isn’t going down. It won’t any time soon, not unless Bucky comes. He doesn’t know which one’s the better devil. He thinks of lying like this for an hour, Steve a hot weight on his back, and feels suffocated. He tries to imagine coming, and his body’s eager enough, cock hard and hanging heavy between his legs, but he can’t make himself reach for it, can’t move at all.

Bucky stews in indecision. It’s a luxury of its own. A few hours in, he won’t care about anything but being fucked full of come. But for now, he can and he does, right until Steve handles his dilemma for him.

He doesn’t do it kindly, and Bucky chokes on air when that huge hand wraps around his cock. Steve nuzzles into his hair and starts stroking. He jerks Bucky off the same way he fucked him, hard and fast and single-minded. Bucky chews on his lip until it bleeds, and then he can’t keep quiet, but the sounds just seem to spur Steve on, his hand moving faster, wrist twisting just right, and it doesn’t take much to get Bucky writhing between the fist on his dick and the knot in his hole. It’s good, and it hurts, and he can’t not move, and that hurts too.

It’s a relief to just let go, fear and desire all pushed aside by sheer, relentless sensation. His gut tightens, his cock jerks, and he tightens like a vice around the knot inside him, again and again—

White spots dance in Bucky’s vision.

Someone screams. His throat aches.

When he comes back to himself, Steve’s knot has deflated a little. Not entirely—that will take a few more minutes, and it’s still big enough to keep him plugged full of come—but it’s not perfectly slotted into Bucky’s hole anymore. He feels oddly hollow. His cock’s limp between his legs but won’t be for long.

Steve’s purring now. His scent has changed, the acrid tang of desperation replaced by the rich musk of satisfaction.

He settles more firmly on top of Bucky, weighing him down without suffocating him. It’s not the most comfortable position, but they’re tied together, and Steve’s warm, and Bucky tries to just sink into it and think of nothing.

-

Steve’s knot goes down after maybe ten more minutes. Fluids drip out of Bucky’s hole, come mixed with slick. Steve’s dick slides out, still hard, and Bucky’s sore rim flutters around the sudden emptiness. His crack is wet, dirty. Bucky can’t dislike it.

Bucky takes advantage of Steve’s weight lifting off to turn around. His muscles ache and joints twinge, and the discomfort becomes acute when pins and needles spread through the parts that were forced to be still. Steve’s still sated enough to indulge in concern. Bucky numbly allows the hands that wander over his body. In a way he’s looking forward to the mindless haze that will soon descend on him; he won’t care, then, about uncomfortable positions or fucking an alpha he has never talked to.

Until today, he’s only known Rogers from a myriad of articles and old film reels. It was a mild obsession, nurtured by how the compound that warped Bucky’s DNA was an inferior version of Erskine’s miracle serum.

Now, he looks up at the legend who’s been haunting America since the 40s and finds that he’s just a man after all.

He’s not surprised when Rogers doesn’t allow him more than a few minutes’ respite before fucking him again. The worst of Bucky’s heat is still a few hours off, but Rogers has no such luxury. At least Rogers doesn’t need much from him. He’s strong and made stronger by the rut, and it’s nothing to him to hold Bucky’s legs in the crook of his elbows and screw in deep.

It doesn’t hurt anymore. Bucky would be sore if he weren’t in heat, but now, he’s just soaked with slick that eases the hurt and grips Steve’s cock with the same, blood-hot desperation with which Steve fucks him.

Bucky just lies there, rocking with Steve’s thrusts, and it’s easier than before, when he was pinned down and pried open, but there’s a thrumming under his skin that makes him restless. It’s not that it doesn’t feel good, because once the pain and the strain of _too-long-too-thick-too-much_ ease, Steve’s got the kind of cock that presses in just the right way and sends warm tendrils of pleasure with every solid stroke. But this—flat on his back, legs spread, and thinking of Jesus—isn’t Bucky. He doesn’t fuck like this.

He reaches for Steve, both hands framing his face, and musters a small, vindictive smile when the touch makes the big, bad alpha start and freeze.

But that flash of spiteful smugness turns into something else entirely when Steve shoves his cock in deep and pushes into Bucky’s open palms, rubbing his face against them like he’s a huge, happy dog. It’s Bucky’s turn to freeze, though he can’t hold on to the stillness when Steve starts moving again, fucking Bucky at a relentless pace that’s at odds with the tender way he nuzzles into his palms.

He keeps one hand on Steve’s cheek but buries the other in the sheets, needing something to hold on to. That gets him a rumbling groan and deep, grinding thrusts that keep him full to choking. Bucky’s cock is half hard again, the heat reducing his refractory period. It’s got its limits, but one of the perks of being an omega is that his orgasms are more varied than they are for non-omega dick-owners. Bucky’s got the feeling that he’ll be very grateful for that soon enough, judging by Steve’s blissful expression and the relentless glide of his cock inside Bucky.

Steve comes with a rough groan, dick jerking inside Bucky. It’s an insane amount of come, even for an alpha, and between Steve’s two orgasms and his own slick, Bucky feels like a clogged sink.

It’s not a very sexy image, but then, neither are induced heats and lethal ruts.

Steve’s knot doesn’t pop, but he also doesn’t soften, doesn’t slip out. He rumbles happily as he shoves his cock as deep in as it can go, turning his head to rub his face into Bucky’s palm. His stubble catches on Bucky’s palm. It’s pleasant, and he indulges in a few moments of trailing his fingers along Steve’s prickly facial hair. His actual hair is much softer, bright like spun gold and smooth as silk. He sifts through the pale stands, scrapping his nails against Steve’s scalp, which earns him another round of oddly gentle purring.

“Aren’t you sweet?” Bucky asks, amused in spite of himself. “Really wish we were doing this in different circumstances, Steve.”

The sound of his name makes him look at Bucky, dark eyes boring into his. The files said they’re blue, and the picture accompanying them proved as much. But now, Bucky has to squint to see the thin circle of color around Steve’s blown pupils.

Bucky wonders what he looks like. Not unaffected, he’s sure, but not completely gone either.

Steve starts moving again. Each thrust makes wet, sloppy sounds, all that come sloshing around inside of him while Steve fucks in. He doesn’t quite pull out, always keeping Bucky spread around his insane girth. It feels nice, Bucky’s always liked that burn of almost too much, but Steve’s got no technique to go with his monster cock, and Bucky’s sadly not so lost to his heat that he can get off on just a mediocre fuck.

He pats Steve’s face and his eyes flutter shut. Poor guy’s absolutely gone. It really is best if Bucky takes matters into his own hands.

He’s strong, but Steve’s stronger. Steve’s entire mind is currently pulsing on his cock, and Bucky’s still in possession of most of his mental faculties. It evens out, more or less. Bucky pets along Steve’s face and hair until there’s a happy pile of purring alpha screwing lazily into him.

Bucky braces, muscles tensing. The tight clench of his ass distracts Steve, and Bucky takes advantage of that moment to flip their positions, pinning Steve’s shuddering body under him. His ass throbs from the violent withdrawal of Steve’s cock, but Bucky’s more concerned with the beginnings of a snarl on Steve’s stunned face. He scrambles to straddle Steve properly and reaches behind him to grab Steve’s dick. He uses his left hand, because it’s his dominant arm and he’s in a hurry, and the touch of cool metal on his dick has the dual effect of pausing Steve’s retaliation and pulling a sharp cry out of him. Bucky likes the sound, likes that he’s the cause of it.

And when he positions himself above Steve’s cock and sinks down on it, Steve throws his head back and howls, and Bucky likes that too.

He doesn’t take it in one go. Can’t. It’s all good and well for Steve to cram the whole thing into him like a true dickhead, but when Bucky’s on top with his thighs trembling and rim burning, it’s a lot harder to ignore the sheer size of Steve.

“What did the damn serum _do_ to you?”

Steve just growls. His hands fly to Bucky’s hips, clamping tight, and Bucky grabs his wrists in turn, all too aware that if Steve really wants to use Bucky like a glorified cocksleeve, there’s not a lot he can do.

Well, he can fight, but he knows how that will end.

“Wait,” he says instead, soft and whining. “Give me time, let me just let me—”

It works. Steve’s grip tightens, fingers pressing bruisingly into Bucky’s skin, but that’s all he does. Bucky breathes, Steve already so deep that he can taste it in his throat, and slowly works his hips down.

It’s a breathless eternity later that he’s seated on Steve’s cock, thighs flush to his hips. He’s got his hands braced on Steve’s chest, its rock-hard solidity oddly grounding. He shifts experimentally and bites down on his lip when sparks claw up his spine.

Steve’s still holding him by the hips, staring unblinkingly. Bucky meets his gaze but finds that he can’t hold it, the burning hunger in them too much for him to take. He focuses instead on their bodies. That, at least, is familiar. Bucky’s an old hand at taking dick, and Steve’s got a damn good one.

He squirms a little, clenching helplessly around Steve’s cock when every twitch makes it press into him in ways that make his whole body flash hot. It’s easier to just start moving, tugging free of the suffocating fulness. The burning glide of it inside him doesn’t make it any easier to breathe, but Bucky knows how to lose himself in the rhythm of it.

He bounces on Steve’s dick, digging blunt nails into his chest and grunting every time the head tugs at his rim, and Steve’s nascent snarl becomes rough, punched-out breaths that make Bucky grin wide in satisfaction. He likes this, the slick slide of that thick cock along his walls and the trembling alpha under him.

Steve’s cock is slick with a filthy blend of bodily fluids. There’s more dripping down Bucky’s crack with every thrust. It’s messy, dirty, and it curls deep into the most primal parts of Bucky and riles them up, drives him wild.

He lifts himself until it’s just the head inside him, pulsing blood-hot where it spreads him wide. He slams down, his whimper swallowed by Steve’s shout, and he does it again and again until Steve’s _roaring_ , a constant, ferocious sound that echoes off the walls. Bucky’s not unaffected, anything but, the dull pleasure of earlier sharpening into deep, jagged spikes that reel him into a torrent of sensation.

It won’t take much for him to come, just a touch on his cock, but Bucky refrains, clutching more firmly at Steve’s chest, fingers digging in meanly. He wants to watch Steve come, wants him trapped in pleasure and helpless, wants some sweet memories to carry out of this room.

Steve doesn’t seem to have objections. He’s a flushed, sweaty mess under Bucky, broad chest heaving obscenely with every breath. His hands are sure to leave bruises on Bucky’s hips, but all they’re doing is holding tight. There’s no attempt at control, just Steve clinging to Bucky and being swept along for the ride. Bucky has always liked blowing his partner’s mind a little—a lot—and Steve just makes it so _easy_.

He throws his head back and grins up at the ceiling as he bears down with a tight, clenching ass, and Steve breaks apart.

It’s glorious.

He shouts through gritted teeth, face and chest flushed a blotchy red, and jerks his hips up, trying to push deeper into Bucky than he can go. Bucky whines and squeezes his thighs around Steve’s hips, holding on as the base starts to swell. It’s still too big, thicker and hotter than anyone can take, but Bucky fucking takes it.

Steve’s knot locks into place, and Bucky falters for the first time, legs suddenly weak. It’s digging into all those parts of him that were made just for this, and the bundle of nerves clamped around Steve’s knot throb with heat. Bucky pants weakly and slumps, held in place only by his hands on Steve’s sturdy chest.

Steve has calmed, bright-eyed and loose-limbed the way alphas get when they’ve got their knot locked in something warm and tight. A purr vibrates up Bucky’s chest, but he swallows it down. His own need is a live, pulsing thing, and Bucky takes another moment to catch his breath before taking his dick in hand.

His fingers barely brush his cock before his wrist is caught and pinned to his side. Bucky tries to twist away on instinct, but Steve’s hand is a vice, and his left hand is also caught and held, the straining metal as ineffective as the weaker flesh.

Steve’s still got that happy, fuck-drunk look on his face, but his eyes are oddly keen.

He rocks his hips. Bucky burns white-hot.

Steve does it again, and again, his knot pulling at Bucky’s tender flesh one moment and grinding into sensitive nerves the next. Bucky can’t speak, can’t breathe, can’t do a damn thing except squirm on Steve’s knot as if he can wriggle free if he pulls just right. But there’s no escape; Steve’s lodged tight inside him and his fingers are tight and unforgiving on Bucky’s wrists.

And he’s rocking Bucky on his knot, pushing and pressing, over and over.

“S-stop,” Bucky gasps, voice shot. Steve doesn’t seem to hear him. “S-Steve?”

A rumbling purr answers him. Steve’s movements become more forceful, hips bucking with savage intent. Bucky’s caught on his knot, body locked around the swell of it, and he can’t breathe, can’t see past the stars in his vision.

“Come on, fuck, stop it, I can’t—what are you— _stop_.”

Steve doesn’t stop.

He keeps Bucky there, seated on his cock with no escape, and grinds his knot into him. It’s filthy, the pleasure so sharp it’s pain, and Bucky can’t, he can’t—

“Please,” he whimpers, shaking uncontrollably, all twisted in on himself. “Oh god, please, please, please—”

He begs, and Steve fucks him with his knot, and Bucky doesn’t know when he stops begging for it to stop and starts begging for release. He’s close, he’s so fucking close, and he just needs—just a touch, all Steve has to—oh god, he’s—

The orgasm hurts too. His insides ripple around Steve’s cock, milking his knot, and it feels bigger then, huge and hot where it’s locked inside Bucky. It tears through him ruthlessly, and Bucky can’t even scream.

And then it’s over, and they’re left with Bucky’s come staining both their bellies, his slick making his rim a little looser around the base of Steve’s cock. Bucky takes it all in with dazed eyes. He wants to collapse—on the bed, on Steve, it doesn’t matter—but he can’t, not when he’s seated on Steve’s knot and straddling his hips.

Steve lets go of his hands. Bucky brings them up to brace himself on Steve again, numbly watching his flesh tremble. The metal one’s steady, but the plates recalibrate with a series of clicks.

He looks at Steve’s face. He’s watching Bucky with eyes that are too sharp for a rut. He’s still lost to it, that Bucky’s certain of, but this isn’t a look that belongs to the half-crazed creature he encountered when he first stepped into this room. An orgasm or three, and there’s some light behind those eyes. It’s eerie, this blend of instinct and intelligence.

Bucky doesn’t know what to make of how Steve’s first priority was to force Bucky to come on his knot. The sentiment’s nice enough. Considerate alphas make good lovers. But whatever is left of Steve’s good sense clearly isn’t enough for Bucky’s words to truly reach him.

Steve reaches for him again. Bucky braces himself, but Steve just touches his face with the tips of his fingers, trailing them from Bucky’s cheek to his jaw, the touch tender and at odd with everything Steve has done so far. Bucky’s a little more prepared when his hands drift lower, resting briefly against Bucky’s pulse before following the path of a drop of sweat down his chest.

Bucky peers through half-closed lids as that strange, electric touch slithers along his treasure trail and comes to a stop at the base of his cock. Steve cups his palm over the soft length of it.

Porn likes to show omega dicks as being comically tiny as compared to alpha or even beta cocks, but Bucky’s pretty sure they just hire actors with small dicks, designation be damned, and shove some lube up their holes for effect. Because in his personal experience—and that of literally everyone he’s discussed this with—dicks tend to come in all sizes in all designation, same as any other body part. An alpha’s appeal isn’t in the size of his cock anyway. It’s in the knot.

Point is that Bucky’s not a small guy, but nestled against Steve’s huge fucking palm, his cock looks tiny. Delicate.

Bucky hasn’t been delicate a day of his fucking life, and it’s—unsettling. He doesn’t know whether it’s unpleasant, and not knowing is its own brand of discomfort.

It’s almost a relief when Steve wraps his hand properly around Bucky’s cock and starts stroking, but only almost, because he’s still weak at the knees from his last orgasm and in no way ready for another. His cock throbs with oversensitivity against Steve’s rough palm. Bucky tries to bat him away, but he might as well be a Pomeranian trying to rein in a horse for all the good it does. Bucky still tries but when he digs his nails into Steve’s arm, he bounces Bucky, a brief, almost gentle motion turned savage by the knot securely lodged in his ass. Bucky doubles over with a whimper, and Steve keeps stroking, and Bucky wants to squirm away, but then his cock starts to swell and his ass gets wetter, gushing so much slick that he can feel it even with Steve’s come drenching him, and it all makes him dizzy.

There’s slow, steady throbbing in his gut, like a second heartbeat.

Steve’s hand moves easier over him now, precome slicking the way, and Bucky—

Bucky’s arching into it and grinding back on the knot and writhing, and he’s so fucking wet, and his blood’s on _fire_ —

He shudders through another orgasm, cock jerking dry in Steve’s grip, ass tightening painfully around Steve’s knot. It’s looser, after, enough that Bucky can collapse without anything tearing, and Steve’s not a bad pillow, chest warm and solid under Bucky.

Strong hands slide down his back. They spread his ass, and Bucky whines when a finger traces his rim where it’s stretched taut around Steve’s cock. It’s wet too, messy from come and his own slick, and Steve’s finger rubs along it smooth and easy. Even the gentle touch stings, but the pain makes him clench too, squirming helplessly on Steve, around him.

Steve keeps touching him, hands gentle and groping in turns, leaving blazing trails of sensation wherever the touch. They squeeze Bucky’s nape and slide between their bodies to grope his pecs. Nails scratch at his scalp and slide sweetly over his scars, and Bucky trembles, and he must be making some noise because Steve’s crooning and rubbing his cheek against Bucky’s hair, and it’s nice, it helps, he can’t think—

There’s a touch on his scent gland, another in his hair, and it’s nice before it turns harsh, a fist in his hair steering Bucky into—

A mouth on his, the warm swipe over his lips, and Bucky opens up without thinking, sucking clumsily on the tongue that slides into his mouth. It’s a wet, dirty kiss, and he can taste Steve’s rut in his spit, and there’s a flash of awareness that _this is a bad idea_ but then teeth sink into his lower lip, and the knot plugging him deflates in a gush of filthy heat, and Bucky’s on his back before he knows it, solid warmth pinning him down and rubbing against him, and he’s still so wet and so _empty_ , and there’s a promise in the line of heat pressed to this thigh—he arches into it, spreads his legs and bares his throat and begs around the tongue in his mouth.

Fingers dig into his thighs, bends him half, and he’s filled in one, slick slide, his alpha’s cock sliding home.

-

It’s a haze of heat and skin.

Crumpled sheets against his back. A rough fist around his cock. His fingers in spun-gold hair. Teeth on his throat. Blood on his tongue. His hole fluttering around a swelling knot.

And that scent, dark and rich, lapping at his senses, coaxing his own scent out of his glands, the two mingling into a warm blend, sated one moment and hungry the next—present, burning, _his_.

-

Someone brings food. Thin packages slide through a slot in the door.

He watches from the bed, vaguely aware that it’s been hours. His body’s a mess, drenched in sticky fluids. Everything aches but nothing hurts. He’s floating in sensation. He looks at himself. There are dark marks all over him, fingers and teeth.

Steve gets the food and feeds Bucky, bite by bite, before he eats himself. They each take a bottle of water, and Steve watches Bucky drink his fill, eyes warm and pleased, before he drinks his own.

A kiss, before exhaustion takes him, and Steve’s mouth tastes like Bucky’s heat.

-

He wakes up flat on his belly, cock in his ass, swelling knot tugging painfully past his rim. He keens, claws at the sheets, but he’s pinned down, Steve’s whole weight on his back. He hushes Bucky, kisses his neck, sucks on the side of his throat, and Bucky gives up the fight with a trembling breath, moaning at the piercing heat of Steve’s mouth on his throat.

The knot shoves in, popping in a rush of blood-hot heat, and Bucky’s body closes around it like it should.

He’s full to bursting, split on a cock and stuffed full of come.

Steve slides a hand between Bucky’s body and the bed, groping his stomach, long fingers spreading over the swell of it. He’s moving, swiveling his hips, knot throbbing as it tugs and pulls and shoves Bucky, gasping, into another orgasm. His cock’s limp, barely twitching, but his ass milks Steve’s knot for what feels like hours, a fresh wave of slick heat triggered by even a slight shift.

He pants through it, too tired to even squirm, and Steve’s heavy bulk is reassuring on top of him, pinning Bucky down and tethering him to his skin.

Steve’s knot goes down an eternity later. He licks at Bucky’s throat, the wet warmth of his tongue soothing on the pulsing ache there. He pulls out of Bucky, cock soft as it slides free, but Steve’s hand is there the next instant, three fingers sliding in.

Plugging him up.

Breeding him. Making it catch.

Except—

“C-can’t,” Bucky rasps.

Steve hums.

“Got, _ah_ , rid of it. Won’t catch.”

Steve hums again, perfectly pleasant. He kisses Bucky’s throat. He’s gentle now.

His fingers twitch inside, grazing softly, accidentally, against Bucky’s prostate. He groans. Breathes. Gives in.

-

It lasts days.

Bucky’s vaguely aware of time passing. He counts his hours by the scorching swell of Steve’s knot. He takes it on his back, up on all fours, down on his stomach, cradled in Steve’s lap. It’s the easiest thing, their bodies slotting together like they never knew anything else.

Food comes, now and then. Steve feeds him, and then eats while Bucky watches. It’s satisfying to see his teeth tear into dry meat and his throat work around great gulps of water.

There are voices sometimes. Familiar, but not Steve’s. Steve growls each time. Bucky soothes him with soft sounds and softer skin, drawing him down into his arms, into his wet, aching body. He ignores the voices. They don’t matter.

Steve matters.

Steve’s got blue eyes and blood on his mouth and a deep voice that trembles around Bucky’s name.

He sleeps with something inside him—Steve’s cock, his knot, his fingers, and he’s never not bloated and so full he can’t breathe, but he likes it, likes the way Steve’s broad palms cradle the swell of his stomach.

-

Later, when he tries to remember, this is the last moment he’ll be able to recall—lying on his side with Steve behind him, soft cock nestled inside Bucky, one hand lying gently over his stomach, the other folded under Bucky’s head. He’ll remember gentle kisses on his throat and over the scars marring his left shoulder. He’ll remember Steve said his name before they fell asleep.

-

Clarity returns in slow, aching dregs.

Bucky smells it before he sees it. He’s more familiar with this facility’s med-wing than he ever wanted to be. It’s also mildly alarming to find himself here when the last thing he remembers is—

Steve, he remembers Steve and that grey room—the rough sheets under his sensitized skin, a warm body blanketing his own.

He doesn’t remember the heat breaking. He sure as fuck doesn’t remember Steve’s rut waning enough for him to do more than say Bucky’s name in varying tones.

Opening his eyes is almost painful. Even with his eyes affirming what his nose told him, Bucky can’t relax. Clint’s snoring form in the chair beside his bed helps a little, but not much.

“Oi.” His throat is dry, voice a hoarse croak. “Barton, wake up. Clint. _Clint_.”

Clint startles awake with a snort. His eyes flit around, a swift survey, before narrowing on Bucky. The smile he breaks into is a lot relieved and a little guilty. It pretty much confirms that something went wrong.

“What did you do?” Bucky snaps. He’s—irritated, bordering on angry, and he can’t quite put his finger on why but also doesn’t care enough to try too hard. “I can’t remember how I got here. Why?”

Clint’s got a good poker face but not with his friends. The guilt on his face triples. Bucky’s got a very bad feeling about that.

“Clint,” he says, quieter now and not because he’s less pissed. Clint flinches. “Start talking.”

“The, uh, the memory thing is because of the…knockout gas. Side-effect. It should be temporary.”

“Knockout gas,” Bucky echoes. “ _Should_ be temporary.”

Clint’s a little wild around the eyes now, squirming like he wants to be anywhere but here. Bucky darts out a hand to grab his knee, shooting his arm a surprised look when he finds it shaky and weak. The grip won’t do shit to keep Clint here; Bucky would be surprised if he even feels it. He flexes his left arm, and the plates ripple up his forearm.

Now that he’s paying attention, the rest of him is not that peachy either. And some tiredness is normal after a demanding heat, but this—he doubts he can get out of bed.

“How about you start from the start,” Bucky says, and it’s not a suggestion. “Like why you assholes used knockout gas on your own fucking agent.”

Clint grimaces.

“We couldn’t separate you and Cap,” he says in that tone he uses when he’s trying to be placating while also expecting to be punted through a wall. It’s not very reassuring. “And we had to knock him out. So, uh, we gassed the room. It’s harmless…as much as supersoldier-grade knockout gas can be harmless. Cap started shaking it off a couple of hours ago. We’ve sedated him the usual way now.”

He stops and looks expectantly at Bucky, who’s been effectively stunned to silence.

“Barton, what the actual _fuck_.”

Clint looks down at his lap and rubs his face with one hand. When he looks at Bucky again, he doesn’t look guilty or like he’d like to be anywhere but here. The serious expression he’s wearing only makes nausea curl in Bucky’s belly.

That’s not a good expression, not from Clint.

“You haven’t noticed, have you,” he says, and it’s not much of a question. “Check your neck, Bucky.”

Bucky’s irritation turns to ice in his veins.

He reaches for his throat, already knowing what he’ll find because there’s only one reason an omega will be told to check their neck after a heat. Denial still makes a valiant attempt to soothe him, but half-formed explanations die a quick death when his fingers touch the jagged scar on his scent gland.

It’s raw but the ache of it isn’t unpleasant. Bucky brings his fingers to his nose. The scent is recognizably his, but it’s mixed with another, familiar one, and the merging is equally obvious.

And now that he’s been told, now that he _knows_ , Bucky can feel it, that indescribable—something. He’s read about it, in trashy novels and scientific articles and casual blog posts. It’s impossible to avoid, and Bucky was curious anyway. The descriptions ranged from a second heartbeat in your chest to feeling your other half’s moods. The journal articles talked of chemicals up until the scientists ran out of logical explanations and cited the wonders of the human brain.

It's lot more and a lot less miraculous than all that. It’s a presence, slotting into Bucky’s skin as if it has always been there. It’s not uncomfortable. He can spend whole lives ignoring it.

“You have to accept a bond for it to take,” Bucky says, staring at his fingers. “I had to have accepted it.”

“You did,” Clint says, gentle and merciless. “I was listening. But you—well, the heat. You weren’t in your right mind.”

“I’ve shared over half my heats with alphas,” Bucky grinds out. “We didn’t fucking _bond_ because the few that tried got kicked through a fucking door.”

“It’s—”

“I want to see.”

“What?”

“The video feed. I want to see it.’

“Bucky, there is no video feed. You wanted me to make sure of it. So I did.”

Clint reaches out and lays a hand on Bucky’s shoulder. Not wrenching away from the touch takes more restraint than Bucky wants to admit to. He closes his eyes and drags in a deep breath. Clint takes his hand away.

“Audio then.”

Clint sighs. Then he nods, reaching to the table next to Bucky. There’s a tablet on it with the S.H.I.E.L.D logo. Bucky watches Clint tap on the screen and takes the device when it’s handed to him.

“Uh, wait a sec.”

Clint plunges both hands into his pockets. One emerges with a tangled set of earphones clutched in his hand. He even untangles it for Bucky, who’s grateful despite the situation because in his state, he’d either fumble with it or tear it into pieces.

“Here. Just play, I’ve adjusted the timestamp to what I think is the, uh, right time.”

He’s not wrong.

It’s odd to listen to the sounds of him moaning and panting like—well, like he’s getting mounted and fucked stupid. Bucky’s never been ashamed about his sexuality; he likes sex, and he likes the way heats let him go fucking wild, but it’s a wholly different beast to listen to this and know his fucking boss heard it and that assorted S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel with a hard-on for Erskine’s original serum will be hearing it.

He can hear Steve too, grunting and growling, sounds that shouldn’t be distinct from a random porn clip Bucky watched but somehow is.

When it comes, it’s easy to recognize what Clint meant by the right time—it’s not particularly subtle.

“Yes,” says Bucky’s past self. “Yes, yes, harder, bite me, oh, _oh_ —”

Bucky’s voice rises into a fever-pitch and then breaks into a scream. Steve’s eerily silent until he groans too. It’s both pained and pleased, and Bucky doesn’t think too hard about why he knows that with such utter certainty.

He hands the tablet and earphones back to Clint.

“Explains the gas,” Bucky says after a while.

Clint huffs.

“Yeah. One thing to separate you after his rut and your heat were over. But a newly bonded alpha with his omega is…let’s just say Fury wasn’t keen on losing a couple of STRIKE squads to Cap.”

“I’m not his omega,” Bucky says stonily.

“Um. Right.” Clint sounds both uncertain and contrite. “Sorry.”

Neither of them speaks for a long time. Bucky doesn’t look at Clint. At some point, he becomes aware that he’s brushing his bonding scar absently.

He has a _bonding scar_.

“Woah, hey, hey—”

Clint reaches over and ever so gently pries Bucky’s hand away from where it was digging nails into the scar. He breathes deep and snarls when the scent that floods his nostrils is his combined with Steve’s. It screams _freshly bonded omega!_

“I’ll break the bond,” Bucky says. “Should take what, 3 heats? A year? Fine. Fucking fine.”

Clint shifts uneasily.

“Okay. That’s—that’s good, that’s the smart thing to do.”

Bucky glares at him. Clint flattens himself against the back of the chair.

“Where is he?”

“Wh—oh, uh, he’s been shifted to one of the rooms. Drugged. Fury doesn’t want him to wake until the…immediacy of the bond has faded a little.”

“You’re going to keep him sedated for, what, a week?”

Clint shrugs.

“Probably. It’s tricky. He burns through everything way too fast. They’re pumping him full of the kind of shit that would kill or cause permanent brain damage to anyone else.” Clint gives him a wry smile. “Even you.”

Bucky nods jerkily but finds he can’t say anything. It’s not…pleasant, the thought of them doing that to Steve. He can’t tell whether that’s the bond talking or just sympathy. He’s sure this fucking job has stripped him of a lot of basic decency but well, there’s something about a post-rut alpha— _Steve_ —being knocked out and forcibly kept unconscious for days on end that makes his heart twinge.

“Do you—do you want to see him?” Clint asks carefully.

For a terrible moment, Bucky’s tempted to say yes.

“No,” he forces out. “That would make…it stronger. I’m going back to D.C. the moment I can get out of this fucking bed.”

“Okay.”

They avoid eye contact in awkward silence for a few minutes. Clint, brave in the way of someone who made two separate careers out of flinging himself off insane heights with no safety net, is the one to break it.

“Are you sure?”

Bucky stares at his clenched fists. His right wrist wears fading bruises from Steve’s fingers.

“I am.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd love to hear your thoughts <3


	2. i've got a lover (and i'm unforgiven)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pre-heat hits four days after the Battle of New York.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your reactions to the last chapter were *chef's kiss*  
> I love you guys 💗

He does go back to D.C., resolving to spend the next few months wearing industrial grade scent blockers and turtlenecks irrespective of the weather. It doesn’t get him as many odd looks as it would have in a civilian workplace. The Triskelion is full of oddballs. He could show up dressed as a duck one day, and they’d just think he went a little off the deep end and leave him be.

On the flipside, they’re also observant fuckers, and Bucky has a hell of a time avoiding Sharon’s clever attempts to find out what the fuck happened. They’re good friends, which is why he indulges her. They’re not great friends, which is why he divulges nothing.

Natasha pays him a visit about a month in. Bucky knows she’s worried when she doesn’t break in at some unholy hour and freak him out in his own home but rather knocks on the door like a civilized human being and waits for him to open the door. She stays for two days, and she says absolutely nothing about what happened or about Steve Rogers, and he’s grateful for that.

She hugs him before she leaves and lets him lift her off her feet.

He feels a little better, but he still can’t look at his neck in the mirror. He tries not wonder how Steve’s doing or think about the matching scar on his throat. He remembers, now, how it felt to sink his teeth into Steve’s throat and mark him as Bucky’s. He remembers the surge of vicious satisfaction at seeing his claim bleeding through Steve’s skin.

He tries.

-

Fury ropes him into the Avengers Initiative.

It turns out that Bucky’s fairly easy to be convinced when the fucking world is at stake. He still comes dangerously close to saying no and spending the rest of life stewing in guilt when he learns that Captain America will be part of the group. He doesn’t claim to know Fury, but he’s worked with the guy enough to have an idea of how his mind works. He’ll have Steve—the Captain—Rogers—oh fuck it.

He’ll have Steve lead the team. Lead Bucky.

He wants to run to the other side of the country and not look back. But there are aliens coming, their planet is fucked, and Bucky finds that he can’t just tell Fury to go suck a dick.

He still cusses out the guy seven ways to Sunday. It’s frankly terrifying that Fury allows it without more than a scowl.

-

Masked, decked in full gear, and with his hair brutally pinned back, the Winter Soldier doesn’t look a lot like the omega that S.H.I.E.L.D. sent to Steve’s bed. Or maybe Steve doesn’t remember those days as clearly, crazed as he was in his rut. It could be that he does know who Bucky is and is just refusing to acknowledge him, but Bucky doubts that.

Whatever the reason, Steve displays no recognition and calls out orders for Bucky with the same brisk tone he uses on the others. The horrid suit he’s wearing covers his throat, and Bucky can’t see his bonding mark. He doesn’t know whether to be grateful for that.

They beat the aliens, narrowly.

Their own people try to fucking nuke them, and they beat that too, even more narrowly.

When it’s all over, the seven of them are alive, even Tony Stark despite what it looked like there at the end. And he wants to eat shawarma. A part of Bucky wants to go along and placate him.

The rest of him bristles at watching Steve touch another omega and grin down at him with mingled relief and affection.

He slips away, catches Natasha’s knowing gaze and Clint’s lopsided grimace as he does. He doesn’t stick around for the clean-up, and he doesn’t call Fury until he’s back in D.C., safely away from Steve Rogers and the fucking hormones his presence births.

-

Pre-heat hits four days after the Battle of New York.

Bucky tries to tell himself it has nothing to do with Steve, that he was due anyway, but the willful lie doesn’t hold when the date he’s got circled in red is another twelve days away. Bucky’s scarily regular.

He makes the necessary phone calls and hunkers down in a pile of blankets, with his basket of toys and another basted of food and drinks both within reach of the bed.

He settles in for his heat with the full knowledge that Steve will be burning through his rut right along with him, hundreds of miles away.

-

It’s horrible. The worst of his life.

Nothing’s enough. Four fingers leave him feeling hollow. His thickest toys are bigger than Steve but don’t have his pulsing heat. Artificial knots stretch him wide, but he screams and begs and cries for Steve to hold him down and fuck him full.

And when it’s over, Bucky’s not sated and pleasantly tired the way he usually is. He’s frustrated, a storm-cloud on legs, and even Sharon doesn’t dare ask questions.

The bond isn’t gone. It’s a little weaker, but he can still breathe and feel another heart beating in time to his.

-

Two months later, Bucky’s transferred to New York.

It’s his fifth transfer in the seven years he’s spent working with S.H.I.E.L.D., and given that he started out in Finland, he can confidently say each one brings him closer to home. Not that there’s much waiting for him at home. His parents moved out of the country once their kids flew out of the nest, and Becca’s a pilot. They all meet once or twice a year, usually on different holidays, and catch up. There’s a family group chat that rarely pings with messages.

Still, Bucky’s never been able to shake an odd, nostalgic attachment for Brooklyn, and it’s good to be back.

He gives Stark Tower—well, Avengers Tower—a wide berth. It’s not very hard. Bucky’s aware that he’s probably being paranoid, but better safe than sorry. He’s the only one of the assembled Avengers who backed out of the program once the battle was over. The rest stuck around for the press conferences and clean-up. It earned him more than a little unwanted attention, but Natasha did cover for him. Now the world’s still a little obsessed with the seven of them, but Captain America and Iron Man are more marketable than the guy dressed like a video game assassin.

All things considered, Bucky is pretty happy to move back to New York, even if it puts him in the same state as the alpha-mate he didn’t plan to bond with.

His mistakes, he’ll learn later, lie in assuming that Steve lives at the Tower and in forgetting Fury’s compulsive manipulative tendencies.

-

The apartment he’s assigned is on the third floor of a somewhat old four-story complex. The elevators are slow, and there’s not a door that doesn’t creak when opened. It’s not the best Bucky has stayed in but far from the worst. The apartment itself is in good condition. The creaking doors would be useful in the case of a surprise attack. As for stealth, Bucky’s naturally the best at sneaking in through his own booby-trapped windows. Natasha comes a close second though.

The apartment above his houses a family of five. They’re loud but not noisy. The one below has a pair of old men who show the wear and tear—and the warmth—of decades of loving. The person opposite him is rarely home. Bucky never sees them. A bout of harmless spying shows a sparsely decorated apartment. The only significant furniture he can see through the window is a bookshelf stuffed close to its limits.

Bucky settles in nicely, cultivates a routine, and ignores the warmth in his veins that shouldn’t be there.

A week and three days in, he comes home late one night and finally runs into his elusive neighbor.

And his first feeling, when he meets shocked blue eyes that are so much brighter for not being swallowed by lust-drunk pupils, is one of senseless, boundless joy. His blood surges in his veins.

The second is betrayal.

-

Steve’s angry.

No, _furious_. The kind of incandescent rage that makes you heroes or monsters.

Even in his head, that sounds dramatic, but watching Steve stalk around his living room while growling into his phone, Bucky finds that he really has no other words for it. The guy took a long look at Bucky, glowing with the same helpless adoration that had washed over Bucky, and then, those pretty blue eyes flashed, and even as Bucky instinctively knew it wasn’t directed at him, he couldn’t fight a nervous shiver.

Steve noticed and visible clamped down on his anger, and it then it gets blurry. Bucky can’t quite recall the details of the mostly nonverbal exchange that now finds them both in Steve’s apartment, but he understands that it has to happen.

It was one thing to run from Steve and ride out their bond’s waning far away from his presence but another entirely to see him and keep on doing the same. Bucky can’t. _Physically_ , he can’t. And whatever Clint or Natasha might have to say about his bullheadedness, Bucky’s not stupid enough to try.

And anyway, this is no coincidence.

Fury isn’t taking his calls. Steve didn’t have much luck either, and if Bucky’s right, then the person on the other end of Steve’s tirade is a longsuffering Hill. In any other situation, Bucky would feel sorry for all the shit she has to put up with, but he’s not in a very charitable mood right now. If Fury had a hand in assigning Bucky an apartment neighboring Steve’s, then Hill had to have known about it.

Steve snarls, suddenly, lips pulled back from his teeth in a gesture that’s more animal than human.

Bucky usually finds that brand of alpha bullshit either unsettling or irritating. Now, well—he’s a little horrified to find his briefs wet. He shifts uncomfortably, glad he’s standing up, and carefully types:

HE’S SNARLING AT HILL WHY THE FUCK AM I WET  
23:31

 _Hawkguy_ _  
_oh yea  
thats a thing i feel you bro  
23:31

Red Widow  
Don’t fuck him  
23:32  
Or do  
Just don’t regret it later  
23:33

Fuck you both  
23:33

Red Widow  
We’re fine. Don’t fuck _Steve_  
23:34

His friends are useless. Bucky gives up and puts his phone away. He’s been texting them like crazy since he realized dialing Fury was pointless, and the last ten minutes have been full of increasingly ridiculous advice.

They did help though. Bucky’s calmer now, less likely to bolt the second Steve turns to him.

As if reality itself is reacting to his will, exactly that happens.

Bucky freezes, flattening himself against the wall when Steve’s blazing eyes fall on him. He makes a conscious attempt to relax but by then, Steve’s already backing away, both hands help up placatingly.

“What did she say?” Bucky asks before the apology brewing in Steve’s expression can be voiced. “It was Hill, right?”

Steve nods.

“Yeah. She’s claiming it was chance that you were assigned this apartment.”

“That’s a shitty fucking lie.”

“She’s not trying to sell it,” Steve says darkly. “I couldn’t get hold of Fury.”

“Figured. I can’t either.”

Just like that, they run out of words. They regard each other with almost the entire room between them, which isn’t saying much. The apartment isn’t cramped, more moderate in size, but Bucky has the feeling that he could share a banquet hall with Steve and still feel hemmed in by his presence.

It occurs to him then that this is their first time meeting each other.

“I’m Bucky,” he says, hearing himself as it from a distance. “James Barnes, but I go by Bucky. You can…call me Bucky.”

It’s a disaster of an introduction. Lucky for Bucky, Steve seems too busy staring goggle-eyed to even really register what Bucky’s babbling.

“Steve,” he says after a long pause, choking on the name. “Steve, uh, Rogers. Which you know.”

Bucky shakes himself out of the momentary stupor. He doesn’t stop hugging his very comfortable, safe wall.

“Not like we really met. Everyone in America knows your name. And you learned my name out of what, a file?”

Steve shakes his head.

“I asked around. After…well, after.”

“Why?”

“Wanted to know your name at least.”

“That’s it?” Bucky asks, more sharply than he intended. “No plans to find me?”

Steve meets Bucky’s eyes steadily. His body language radiates discomfort, but his stare doesn’t waver, and when he speaks, his voice is even.

“I wouldn’t do that to you. Or anyone. If you’d stayed, then yes, I would have liked to…talk. But you made your preferences clear when you left. And I accepted your decision. I still do.”

On nearly any other alpha, that kind of talk would have been sanctimonious as all hell. But Steve has this way of injecting a powerful blend of authority and sincerity into his voice that’s got nothing to do with being an alpha. Bucky caught a glimpse of it in the battle, but it’s a hell of lot more potent in the privacy of an apartment.

The situation in his underwear is—well, it’s a Situation now.

He wrenches his mind away from the gutter and focuses because this conversation is important.

“Most alphas would be offended,” he says.

“My designation does have a reputation for being dickheads, yes.”

If Bucky didn’t just spend a solid fifteen minutes listening to Steve growl and curse at Hill, then he’d have been reduced to silence for a few seconds by the casual swearing. Captain America has an image, but ten seconds into a sane Steve’s presence, it was obvious that the man is much more than the shield.

“But you’re special?” Bucky asks softly.

“Well, you heard Stark. Everything that makes me special came out of a bottle.” _Ouch_. Some discomfort might show on his face because Steve softens a little. “No, Barnes. What happened was—it shouldn’t have happened, and it’s not fair to you. Least I can do is make it easier on you.”

“It’s not fair to you either,” Bucky points out. “You didn’t have any say in it either.”

Steve just shrugs. It pisses Bucky off.

“No,” he snaps. “You don’t get to preach about not being a dickhead and then shoulder the entire responsibility for something that was on us both. And Fury. Hell, I consented more clearly than you. You were half-crazed from rut. I signed a goddamn form. And the—the bonding. I accepted it. I returned it. You heard it. We wouldn’t be in this otherwise.”

Steve’s face does several complicated things. For the first time since they started talking, Steve looks away from Bucky’s eyes.

“It’s never been like that. I’ve—yeah, it was always intense after the serum. But I didn’t lose myself. Not like that. It shouldn’t have happened. I am sorry.” He looks up and gives Bucky a wan smile. “Heard what though? I don’t understand.”

“The tape?”

Steve just shakes his head.

“Oh. They recorded us. For safety.” That’s not completely true and judging by Steve’s frown, he knows it. “I vetoed video surveillance if it makes you feel better. Audio. After I, um, woke up, I listened to parts of it. I figured they’d let you do the same. Help you understand how it was. You—how much do you remember?”

“Only bits and pieces,” Steve admits. “And no. They never mentioned an audio. Fury just told me what happened.”

Bucky considers that for a few seconds. Then he breathes out slowly through his nose and counts backward from ten. It doesn’t help much. When he opens his eyes, Steve’s staring at him with concern.

“They shouldn’t have done that,” Bucky tells him. “I know Fury’s a cagey bastard, but this was just a dick move.”

Steve huffs a humorless laugh.

“Yes, well, it’s clear enough that S.H.I.E.L.D. and I have conflicting ideas on how to go about things. I owe you another apology.”

The non sequitur makes Bucky blink.

“What for?”

“This is my fault.” Steve makes a broad gesture, one huge arm sweeping across the room. At Bucky’s uncomprehending look, he clarifies. “You being here. They didn’t arrange this just to torment me. Us. They’re trying to get me to change my mind.”

“Your mind about what?” Bucky asks testily. His mind jumps to a hundred wild scenarios, each worse than the last.

“Working for S.H.I.E.L.D.,” Steve answers. “They asked—well, more that they thought it would be a given. I disabused them of that notion. Fury’s been trying to rope me in for a while. Talked a lot of bull about Peggy’s legacy, as if—anyway. I guess he thought he had me after the Chitauri invasion. But that was for the world, not him. I didn’t—still don’t—plan to work for them. And I’d say you’re a last-ditch attempt.”

Bucky’s mind is reeling. But there’s no surprise, no denial. Just fury and resignation.

“Of course,” he says softly. Steve’s eyes narrow at his tone. “Alphas are notoriously weak when it comes to their bonded omegas.”

Steve’s answering smile is shockingly bitter.

“So I’ve been told.”

Bucky swallows. Steve stares. And just like that, they’re out of words and left unmoored in the ringing silence, facing down the conversation they’ve been dancing around since the beginning.

It occurs to him then, something Steve said, the implications of which Bucky didn’t register when he heard it.

_You heard Stark—_

“You know,” Bucky says numbly. “That I’m the Soldier.”

For once, Steve seems caught off guard.

“I—yeah. Of course.”

“Since when?”

Steve levels him with a steady, measuring look. Bucky holds it, breathing deep and even, not showing how his heart is pounding in his chest. His whole body’s yearning, aching, and his mind isn’t unaffected either, but he clings to his wall and keeps away, burning quietly under Steve’s gaze.

“Since I saw you,” Steve finally says. “Smelled you.”

“I was wearing scent blockers. Strongest in the market.”

“Won’t work.” There’s a hint of a smile on Steve’s face. He taps his nose. “Serum. But…even without that, I’d know you. Same way you would.”

Bucky clenches his fists and bites back something he’d regret later. Steve doesn’t deserve his vitriol. The past few months have given Bucky some perspective, and it’s not like he was furious at the guy to begin with.

“I wouldn’t know,” Bucky tells him. “Never been bonded before.”

Steve nods placidly.

“I was. Once.”

Bucky waits, but that’s all Steve seems to have to say on the matter. Curiosity burns in him, but Bucky can’t tell how of that is the national Captain America obsession he’s been infected with and how much is possessiveness over a mate.

Fucking hormones.

“You didn’t say anything,” Bucky says, half just to escape his thoughts. But he does want to know the answer.

“Neither did you,” Steve points out, infuriatingly reasonable. “As I said, I respect your decision.”

That’s the ideal response. Bucky has no goddamn reason to be pissed off, but gods help him, he is.

“So what, you’re just willing to go with the flow? Whatever I want goes, you have no fucking opinion on anything?”

Steve blinks and takes a step forward. He catches himself, and Bucky can see his body locking down, muscles tightening with the effort to stay there, on the other side of the room, and not come to Bucky.

Come to him and what? Touch him? Scent him? Fuck him?

 _Comfort_ him?

“I wouldn’t say that,” Steve says carefully, in the manner of a man who’s navigating a verbal minefield. “It’s a complicated situation. You want to be left alone. I’ll do that. It will…resolve itself on its own. In time.”

There’s a hesitance in Steve’s tone, a grimace at the corners of his mouth, that reminds Bucky of his last heat. Those frantic, frustrating few days when he screamed for his alpha with the full knowledge that he wouldn’t—couldn’t—come.

“How was your rut?”

It’s a cruel question. Bucky doesn’t know what he’s doing. Steve’s expression turns stony.

“Painful.”

“Did you scream for me?”

“ _Barnes_.”

Bucky blinks. He doesn’t remember moving, but he’s halfway across the room, and Steve is tantalizingly close. Bucky can smell him, dark and rich, a scent that twines around him like a lover and sinks through his skin into blood that warms at the touch.

“My name is Bucky,” he says softly. “And I did. Scream for you.”

Steve’s a man of considerable self-restraint. If this brief encounter has told Bucky anything, it’s that. But serum or not, he’s still human. And he may be a decent man down to his bones, but he’s still an alpha faced with his bonded omega.

There’s a flash of visceral hunger in Steve’s expression, a half-formed curse that lashes through the heavy silence, and then a blur of movement.

Bucky doesn’t fight the body that slams into him, lets himself be pushed back and pinned on the same wall he clung to earlier. And Steve—he really is impressive, even after this. His arms are on either side of Bucky, caging him in, but there’s a good foot of space between their bodies. Bucky exhales and lets the tension drain out of his body.

There’s a part of him that wants to tilt his head and bare his throat, and it’s half instinct, half the desire to see what Steve will do. But he’s not that far gone yet.

“What are you doing?” Steve asks him. “Christ, Barnes.”

“It’s Bucky,” Bucky reminds sharply.

Steve looks pained.

“Bucky, what are you doing?”

“I don’t know.”

At Steve’s incredulous look, Bucky just shrugs. He’s soaked through his briefs. He wonders if Steve can smell it. Bucky can smell Steve and has to consciously control his breathing so he won’t stand there dragging in great, gulping lungfuls of Steve’s spicy arousal.

“You were acting like this didn’t even affect you,” Bucky says honestly. “Wanted to see far the ice went.”

“Jesus Christ, kid.”

Bucky swallows thickly.

“Tell me the truth,” he rasps. “What did you really want to do when you woke up and found me gone?”

Steve squeezes his eyes shut. He has long lashes and a very beautiful face. Bucky curls his hands into fists.

When Steve opens his eyes, they’re wild around the edges and infinitely more familiar to Bucky than the calm composure he’s seen until now.

“Find you,” Steve grits out. “I could feel you in my _blood_. I wanted to see you, touch you, could barely breathe wanting it. But I didn’t. And I was never going to, not once I was in my right mind.”

“We’re not animals.”

“No.” Steve almost sounds relieved. “We’re not.”

Bucky could—should—stop it there. Push Steve away or step out from under his arms. Steve wouldn’t stop him, he’s sure of that. But he would want to, and now Bucky knows that.

If they’d met like normal people—

“I left S.H.I.E.L.D. because of you,” Steve says suddenly. “No, not _you_. The way they handled this. I never asked them to send me an omega. Didn’t occur to me that I should have asked them not to.”

“They—we were afraid you’d die.”

“It was still my choice to make. Not theirs.”

 _Not yours_ , Steve doesn’t say, but Bucky hears the words anyway.

“I’m sorry.”

He means it. Steve lets out a shuddering breath.

“It’s not just that,” he says. “The aftermath. The sedation. The lies. They never told me you were the Winter Soldier. It was clear they never intended to. And I could have understood them protecting you, but then you shouldn’t have been there, and you sure as fuck shouldn’t be here now.”

Bucky swallows his anger, lets it curl into a tight, hot ball in his chest. He’ll let it out later, when the person in front of him deserves it. Steve doesn’t.

“I think they thought I could convince you,” Bucky says. “I don’t have any orders yet. But once we saw each other… Or they wanted to dangle me in front of you. Bait, I guess.”

These are thoughts that occurred while he was listening to Fury’s phone ring and ring. The look on Steve’s face says they’re not unfamiliar to him either.

“I’d have refused, Steve.”

Steve rears back like his name was a blow. Bucky’s moving before he can stop himself, curling a hand in Steve’s shirt. Steve looks down at the offending limb and back up at Bucky’s face, pupils already bleeding into the blue.

“You don’t want anything to do with me,” Steve says, confused and a little pleading.

“I’m not S.H.I.E.L.D.’s to pimp out whenever they please,” Bucky tells him gently. It’s not a no. “The first time—that was my choice, more or less. I’m sorry it wasn’t yours.”

Steve shudders. He sways closer to Bucky, buffeting him with his warmth. It’s nothing like the heat he emanated when he was in rut, but Bucky can tell Steve runs hotter than your typical human and Bucky too, who’s enhanced himself but not quite the same as Steve.

He places both hands on Steve’s shoulders, and even he can’t tell whether he’s holding Steve back or keeping him close.

“For what it’s worth,” Steve says, voice noticeably deeper, “I’m glad I’m not dead. And—I’m glad it was you.”

“You barely know me.”

“I know you’re a good man. That’s enough.”

“Maybe you should look at my file after all. I’m anything but.”

Steve touches his face. It seems to take him herculean effort to detach one arm from the wall. When his fingers brush Bucky’s cheeks, they’re stained white and smell of plaster.

Bucky tilts his face into a hand that could crush his head into pulp and feels strangely safe. Steve’s touch is tender. It trembles.

“We’re soldiers,” Steve tells him. “We do what we can.”

If they’d met like normal people, Bucky would have—

Bucky kisses him.

It’s a sudden, hard thing. Steve barely gets the time to react beyond a shocked gasp before Bucky pulls back. He doesn’t go anywhere and doesn’t let go of Steve either.

“I’m not doing this on orders,” Bucky tells him. “I don’t give a rat’s ass whether you work for S.H.I.E.L.D. This is my choice too.”

“It’s a bad idea,” Steve says, but he’s got the look of a man preparing to leap off the edge. “The bond’s weaker now. It won’t be if we do this.”

“It’ll still break. All it takes is time.”

A dark shadow passes over Steve’s face.

“Trust me, Bucky, I know.”

Steve swoops in before Bucky can voice a question. He expects to be kissed, but the hand on his face tilts his head to the side, and then Steve’s nosing his hair to the side and burying his whole damn face in Bucky’s neck. Their bodies are suddenly flush together, and Steve’s chest moves maddeningly against Bucky’s with every breath he takes. Bucky hears him and feels him too, hypersensitive to the press of his nose to Bucky’s scent glands.

It's not the one wearing their bonding mark. He doesn’t know whether Steve chose the other deliberately, or if he simply didn’t know.

Steve pulls back with a deep, ragged breath. His cheeks are flushed, eyes dark; he looks drunk. Bucky catches only a glimpse before he lurches forward to take his own fill, but the sight will be burned into his mind forever, the same way he dreams of Steve in his rut, bare and golden and gorgeous.

And then he’s drowning in Steve’s scent and all thoughts fade to wisps.

It’s a heavy musk, almost overwhelming, and Bucky’s never had pretty words for the way an alpha’s scent squirms under his skin and sinks teeth into the soft, needy parts underneath, and it’s no different now, but he knows it’s better than any drink or drug.

One breath, and he’s gone. Intoxicated. His blood pulses in time to the beat of Steve’s heart.

A hand fists in his hair, pulls him back, and Bucky limply lets it happen. Steve’s eyes are somehow both dark and bright; you can drown in them. Bucky shouldn’t want to.

When they kiss, their mouths taste like their mingled scents.

-

Steve fucks him right there, holding Bucky up against the wall.

His clothes are on the floor, half torn, and his throat and chest ache from Steve’s teeth. Steve is wearing his own bruises in the shape of Bucky’s fingers, arms and shoulders striped with red and pink. All of them will fade, their bodies made to forget every touch, but their minds will remember.

Bucky doesn’t know whether that’s a blessing or a curse.

“I can hear you thinking,” Steve says. His cock’s poised at Bucky’s rim, the blunt head burning blood-hot. “Stop it.”

Bucky laughs, loud and cracked around the edges.

“Make me.”

Steve does.

He’s sopping wet, and Steve damn near put his fist up his ass earlier while he wrapped those plush pink lips around Bucky’s cock, but it’s still one hell of a stretch. His cock is a line of solid, searing heat, and Bucky throws his head back against the wall and claws up Steve’s back, and he still screams, a helpless, shattered sound.

Steve’s talking, his voice lapping at Bucky like velvet, but they’re just sounds, no sense to any of them.

He bottoms out with a gasp he buries in Bucky’s skin. Bucky heaves for air, limbs all wound tight around Steve, less for security than because he desperately needs something to cling to. White sparks at the edges of his vision, and his whole body’s singing, clamped tight around Steve’s cock. The scar on his throat aches, recognition and satisfaction all rolled into it. Biology is a pain in the ass more often than not but now, fucked full of the man he wears in his blood, Bucky can admit that whoever designed these bodies wasn’t entirely cruel.

It’s like nothing he’s ever felt, no alpha he’s ever fucked or knotted, and Bucky thought the mind-rending pleasure he remembers from the heat was just that—the heat—but now, he thinks it was the bond that sent savage sensation sweeping through him and ruined him for everyone else.

Bucky raises a trembling hand to Steve’s head and strokes the golden strands. Steve stirs at the touch, untucking his face from Bucky’s throat, nuzzling gently at his bonding scar as he withdraws. The mark twinges in answer, releasing a wave of pheromones that has Bucky clenching around Steve and gushing slick. It drips down his stuffed hole and trickles along his crack, and Steve’s the one who shivers then, eyes fluttering shut.

“You can move,” Bucky tells him, stroking the delicate skin under Steve’s eye with his thumb.

“Don’t wanna hurt you,” Steve says, slurring a little. He looks drunk again. Bucky, whose knees buckled when Steve worked a fourth finger inside him and is now held up only by Steve’s hands and inhuman strength, knows exactly how he feels.

“You won’t. I won’t break.”

Steve doesn’t look convinced. He wants to move though. Bucky can see it, feel it. Steve’s so carefully still, muscles tense and straining, his cock not shifting even an inch inside, as if it’s easier on Bucky to be split on that monster cock without a moment of respite.

Bucky yanks at a fistful of hair. Steve groans, the sound breaking into a deep growl when Bucky’s walls tighten around him.

“Come on, I’m made for this, remember? Nothing’s gonna feel as good in me as you, Steve.” Bucky purrs Steve’s name, baring his teeth when that dark gaze sharpens, turns predatory. “And no one’s gonna be as good for you as me, not for a while. Might as well take advantage.”

Steve’s fingers tighten on his hips, turning bruising in a hot second. His expression’s hard, almost angry, and Bucky thought until tonight that the ferocity and violence was Steve’s rut, not him, but he knows better now.

There’s a storm brewing in this man’s blood, and Bucky’s in its path.

He grins wide and drinks it down.

Steve fucks him like he wants to put Bucky through the wall with his cock, and if the gentleness of his mouth and his hands was good, this is better. Every thrust, every touch, pulls Bucky violently down into his body, tethering him in his skin even as his blood burns and bones ache to be one with Steve’s.

He cuts his lip on Steve’s teeth and tongues the blood. Steve licks it off his mouth.

They kiss, gentle and savage in turns, until Steve shifts his grip and the new angle plows his cock right into Bucky’s prostate, and then Bucky just pants open-mouthed against Steve, letting him bite at his lips and tongue-fuck him.

Steve speaks now and then, little bits of praise that make Bucky’s heart thump painfully.

He goes over the edge without a hand on his cock. He doesn’t need it, doesn’t even want it, not when he’s been perilously close to coming since Steve dropped to his knees. He screams as his climax tears through him. Steve growls as Bucky’s ass tightens convulsively around him.

“I’m going to—” Steve grunts. He’s red down to his chest, his eyes clenched shut. “Can I, Buck, fuck, can I—”

“Yes,” Bucky gasps half-dazedly. “W-what?”

Steve speaks a full sentence with visible effort.

“Can I knot you?”

Bucky’s gut tightens. He tightens painfully around Steve’s cock, tearing whimpers from them both.

“Yes,” he hisses. “Yes, yes, give it to me, _yes_.”

He thought Steve was giving his all before. And boy, was he wrong.

He adjusts his grip on Bucky, hoists him a little higher, and screws into him like he can fuck all the way into Bucky’s throat. Bucky shouts, nails scoring angry red lines down Steve’s arms, and all that earns him is a thrust that makes his whole body clench and surge with heat. Steve’s knot is swelling, tugging at Bucky’s rim each time he pulls out, a swift sting that makes him shudder, every damn time. His nails draw blood, but Steve doesn’t even notice, chasing his end in Bucky’s body with single-minded intensity.

He shoves in deep, knot too big to pull out now, and sinks his teeth into Bucky’s throat, dangerously close to their bonding scar.

Bucky’s spent cock throbs, his ass grows impossibly wetter, and Steve’s knot locks into place.

Bucky _keens_.

He runs out of breath and drags in desperate gulps of air. Steve nuzzles him, rubbing that big, dumb face over Bucky’s throat and face, crooning gently to soothe him. And it works; Bucky breathes deeper and slower in spite of himself, but his nails are still embedded in Steve’s skin, and his left hand has left raised lines all along Steve’s skin. He runs his fingers over the marks, murmuring an apology that Steve kisses off his lips.

“Why are you so fucking big?” Bucky asks, half laughing, half sobbing.

Steve laughs too, breath falling hot on Bucky’s skin.

“Can I take you to bed?” he asks.

“That’s a little backward.”

“This whole thing is.”

Bucky can’t argue with that. And it would be nice to have a mattress under him instead of a hard wall while he’s stretched around a knot. He nods.

Steve just—steps away, Bucky secure in his arms, knot locked tight inside Bucky, and Bucky’s brain frizzles out for a bit.

When he comes back online, Steve’s in the bedroom, carefully knee-walking to the middle of the bed while Bucky clings to him like a fucked-out koala. The knot presses into his nerves and pulls at his rim, and Bucky’s a sparking live wire the whole time, panting into Steve’s throat. Steve lowers them into bed, and his knot yanks at Bucky’s hole, and he sinks his teeth deep, hyperaware of Steve’s own bonding scar next to his mouth.

Steve groans, the sound one of mingled pain and pleasure.

He gets them settled on the bed. They didn’t exactly think the position through when they were fucking against a wall, so they end up Steve leaning on the headboard and Bucky straddling him, both of them panting like they took on a whole host of aliens.

And now, with the afterglow draining out of his system, Bucky can freely acknowledge what a monumentally bad idea this is.

Then Steve wraps his hand around Bucky’s cock, thumb rubbing along the sensitive head. Bucky gasps soundlessly, ass rippling around Steve’s dick as clever fingers coax him back to hardness.

“Easy,” Steve says, kissing along Bucky’s jaw, sweet and hot. “Let me, Buck.”

And Bucky, god help him, does.

-

If they’d met like normal people, Bucky would have liked to try and love this man.

-

“I’ll move out,” Bucky says.

He’s draped over Steve’s chest, held in a warm embrace. It’s the kind you could stay in forever. The thought is quiet and wistful; Bucky knows he can’t.

Under him, Steve freezes. It’s only for a second, but it’s not like Bucky can miss it with their bodies pressed flush together.

“No,” Steve says after a pregnant pause. “I will.”

“That’s not fair.” Bucky thinks he should sound indignant, but his body’s loose and lazy from two orgasms and still pleasantly stretched around a knot. He just sounds tired. “You were here first. I’ll go.”

“I’ve got a floor in Stark Tower that Tony’s been bugging me to move into for weeks. Might as well.”

And that—that’s ideal, and Bucky should be happy, but as is the pattern for the night, he’s angry instead. He doesn’t have the energy to do more than draw back and glare at Steve.

“Is he trying to court you?”

Steve’s face flashes through a series of complicated expressions.

Shock. Surprise. Understanding. Amusement. Disappointment.

“Tony’s got two mates,” Steve says in the end. “Even if he didn’t, we’re not interested in each other like that. He’s a friend.”

Bucky nods. And becomes very, very aware of what he sounded like.

“Sor—”

“Would it matter if I was? Interested in him? In anyone.”

Bucky opens his mouth and shuts it just as quickly. This is not a conversation he should have with a knot up his ass, but he’s self-aware enough to know that if he weren’t very delicately trapped, he’d just flee.

“No,” he says in the end. “No, it doesn’t. I’m sorry I asked, it’s just—I don’t know. Instinct. Hormones. Some bullshit.”

“That they are,” Steve says, amused. Then, more seriously, he adds, “I understand, Buck. It’s the same for me. And for what it’s worth, I don’t intend to have…relations with anyone until our bond dissolves.”

“Yeah. Same. It wouldn’t be fair to them. Or anyone.”

Steve gives him a look Bucky can’t quite decipher but leaves him warm in his bones all the same. He pulls him down into a kiss, and Bucky goes easily, pleasantly surprised at the syrupy sweetness of it. Steve’s all closed lips and slow, easy motions. He’s the kind of guy who’d sweep you off your sweet on the first date and leave you with a taste of something you can’t quite forget. Bucky’s met a few alphas like that in his time, but none as memorable as Steve. It’s not that he’s Captain America. It would be refreshingly simple if he were only Captain America.

Steve Rogers is the menace.

They break the kiss, and Bucky’s thoughts must show on his face because Steve smiles, a sweet little curl of kiss-swollen lips that makes Bucky ache.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he says, the endearment skewering right Bucky between his ribs. “I’m sorry for all of this.”

“Not your fault,” Bucky chokes out. “For what it’s worth, if we’d met in any other way—the invasion, some random mission, in a fucking coffee shop, I’d have—I’d have liked to see if we could be something.”

Bucky doesn’t know what unholy urge compels him to add all that. He shouldn’t have. Steve’s expression softens into the gentlest heartbreak, and it makes Bucky’s breath catch. He doesn’t cry, but a younger, gentler him might have. A part of him still wants to.

“We could still try,” Steve says. He doesn’t sound hopeful so much as resigned, a tilt to his smile that says he knows the answer to a question he hasn’t yet asked. “The way it started doesn’t have to be how it ends.”

Bucky’s tempted. He doesn’t even try to hide it, any more than he tries to hide the decision he makes a few seconds later. Steve watches him with the same sad eyes and the same soft smile.

“I can’t,” Bucky says. “A bond’s a liability. Even with you being who you are. Especially. I’d have—I’d have liked it someday. When I’m retired with some cushy desk job. But that’s not now.”

Steve just nods, accepting Bucky’s reasons without even a hint of a fight. Bucky wonders, perversely, if he even wanted one.

“A bond breaking’s no easy thing to live through. I’m sorry you’ll have to go through it.”

Steve seems like he’s speaking from experience. Bucky wants to pry but doesn’t. It’s an intensely personal thing, and curiosity doesn’t give him the right to be cruel.

“Won’t be just me. I’m sorry too. You don’t deserve this either, Steve.”

Steve gives him another of those faint, lopsided smiles.

“I’ll move out tomorrow,” he says, not unkindly. “I wish we’d met in better circumstances, Buck.”

This is going to haunt Bucky—Steve’s mouth curving softly around his clipped name, more affectionate than he has any right to be. It’s another memory to join the heated parade he already has, but there’s an intimacy to this that unsettles him.

He and Steve are anything but close. They had one conversation and fucked a lot, most of which was under the influence of hormones stronger than most drugs. But there’s something here. That’s what makes Bucky so damn wistful.

“Me too,” is all he says in the end.

Steve smiles at him and shifts. Bucky realizes abruptly that while they were having their awkward heart-to-heart, Steve’s knot deflated and Bucky was left sitting on his half-hard dick.

He didn’t even _notice_.

Steve’s smile turns into a smirk, as if he knows exactly what Bucky’s thinking.

“My ego’s bruised,” Steve murmurs.

“My ass is bruised,” Bucky shoots back without thinking. He shifts, still seated on Steve’s cock, and lets out a quiet gasp when he feels it fill a little more. “Oh my god. Are you kidding me?”

Steve just raises an eyebrow.

“You can’t be getting hard again, that’s insane.”

“Why are you surprised?”

“That’s different, you were in _rut_.”

“It’s more the serum than the rut.”

Jesus. Jesus Christ.

“An alpha with a refractory period this short is a threat to social order.”

Bucky needs to shut up pronto. But then Steve laughs, and the sound does things to Bucky, both because there’s no way he can’t feel it all the way inside with him still draped on Steve and seated on his cock but also because it’s a deep, unbearably warm sound that makes Bucky’s stomach flutter like he’s a smitten teenager all over again.

He squirms, helpless not to, and does it with real intent when Steve rapidly returns to full hardness inside him.

Bucky bites his lips and meets Steve’s eyes, finds them dark and hungry without a trace of humor in them anymore.

“What are you doing, son?”

Oh fuck, oh fuck.

If Steve wanted Bucky to stop, that was the last thing he should have said. His cock surges to life so fast that Bucky gets dizzy. His ass clenches, drenching Steve’s dick in a fresh flood of slick. Blue eyes widen, darkening again, made unnaturally bright with want. Steve’s hands curl around Bucky’s hips, fingers digging into skin and pressing in on bone.

“One more for the road?” Bucky asks breathlessly.

He licks his lips, and Steve follows the flick of his tongue keenly.

“You’re a menace,” he rasps, chest rumbling with the beginnings of a growl.

“Funny,” Bucky says. “I was thinking the same ‘bout you.”

In a blur of skin and air, Bucky’s on his back on the bed, Steve looming over him. He lays his body over Bucky, all solid pressure and pleasant warmth. Bucky’s blood sings, everything warm and good and _right_ , and Bucky doesn’t have the heart to give himself a reality check.

Just once more. Just a little time.

He reaches for Steve both arms, and Steve leans in, and they kiss in a white-hot explosion of pheromone-laced heat.

-

Bucky doesn’t stay the night.

Steve keeps his word. He’s gone by dawn.

In the evening, Bucky watches from his doorway as a group of movers go in and out of the apartment, hefting boxes and hauling furniture.

There’s a hollow ache in his chest. He wishes he’d said a better goodbye.

-

Fury’s unrepentant. Hill at least has the grace to look apologetic.

The room smells aggressively of nothing. Bucky’s an omega doused in scent blockers to hide both his and Steve’s scents, and the other two are betas. It’s strange to be this furious and not have the air writhing with pheromones.

Bucky wishes this were a movie. Then they’d be the bad guys, and he could just dramatically storm out. He’d probably brood in the rain and find his calling in a nobler cause. That, in this case, would be the Avengers, Bucky assumes. He’s getting the impression that without Steve working for S.H.I.E.L.D., Fury doesn’t have as much control over the group as he’d like.

But this isn’t a movie, and S.H.I.E.L.D. isn’t the villain. Fury’s just a man so practical that he’s almost cruel, and he’s hardly the worst among them.

Bucky’s still going to storm out, just for a while.

“Indefinite leave,” Fury echoes, eyebrow somewhere in the stratosphere.

“Until the bond breaks, yes.”

“You’re one of our best agents.”

“I’m an agent who doesn’t trust you to use my _unwanted mating bond_ ”—Bucky stresses the words; Fury doesn’t even flinch—“to manipulate Captain America in ways that would endanger us both.”

At least Fury doesn’t deny that.

“This is reckless, Barnes.”

“With all due respect, Director, it’s either this or I quit. You can have the fucking arm back.”

Fury looks mutinous. Hill sighs.

“That won’t be necessary, Agent Barnes. Leave request approved.”

“Hill!”

“Lesser evil, sir,” she says implacably. “Barnes is well within his rights to file a harassment suit.”

Bucky scowls at her. That will go nowhere, not with S.H.I.E.L.D.’s clout, and she knows it.

“I’ll see you in a year,” Bucky grits out before turning on his heels and stalking off, trying desperately to feel like he’s won something.

“It was a desperate play,” Hill says from behind him, close enough that Bucky’s tempted to turn around and throw a punch. “We didn’t think it would work.”

“That doesn’t fucking excuse it.”

“No,” she says softly. “It doesn’t.”

Bucky walks away and doesn’t think of how it did work, just not the way they intended. He knows, now, how it is to be with Steve when they’re not lost to their cycles. He knows the taste of Steve’s smile and the warmth of his laughter. He knows the sound of his name on Steve’s lips.

He knows what they could have had, in another life.

They’re precious memories, but it would have been infinitely easier not to have them.

-

Natasha sends him a sad smiley face. Clint extends an invitation to the barn, says Laura won’t mind. It’s not the first time he’s invited Bucky there. He knows it’s a privilege to even know that the farm exists, that Laura and the kids exist. Laura’s a civilian and untouched by blood that stains all their hands; she grew up without violence and now lives without violence. Bucky has always appreciated the trust and taken care not to impose on the bubble of normalcy Natasha and Clint have carved for themselves.

But this time, he says yes.

-

It takes all of three days for him to be bored out of his mind and get perilously close to calling Hill to tell her he changed his mind. He won’t because that would be the kind of surrender that will come back to bite him in the ass repeatedly, but he entertains the notion far too often. The farm is nice, Laura is nice, and even the kids are cute and pleasant to manage from a distance, but it’s the kind of life that eats at the edges of Bucky’s mind.

He'd wonder how the fuck Clint takes it, but it’s clear that Clint loves it here. He won’t be able to stay for long, and Bucky bets his ass that retirement will eventually eat Clint alive, but as it stands, Laura runs the farm while Clint and Natasha stay when they can, often taking turns. It’s the sort of relationship that Bucky would never be able to handle but different folks, different strokes.

Evening of the fourth day, Natasha arrives.

Bucky’s not there when she does. He’s on a run, trying and failing to let the burn of his muscles exorcise Steve from his head. That’s another problem with the boredom—an idle mind is the devil’s playground.

Bucky’s devil has cornflower eyes and sunshine hair, and it’s so easy to fall.

Natasha’s on the porch when he returns. She’s a brunette now, hair falling to her shoulder is straight, ragged spikes. It makes her beautiful like the gleam of a naked blade, but it’s not quite Natasha. She’s the kind of knife you won’t see until it’s handle-deep in your gut.

“Hey, stranger,” she greets when Bucky gets close. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“Figured I’d invade your home for a week.”

“You can stay longer.”

“Ticket’s already booked,” Bucky says, as if rescheduling is the greatest hassle he can think of.

Nat shoots him a knowing look but doesn’t say anything. She pats the space beside her, and Bucky sits down, rolling her eyes when she takes an exaggerated sniff.

“You stink.”

“Rather smell of sweat than Steve.”

“Hey now, he smells nice. And you still smell like him.”

Bucky sighs, undoing his bun so his hair hides the bonding scar again. Natasha watches him with keen interest. Bucky’s got the strangest, but likely very justified, feeling that she’s going to say something he’d rather not hear.

“He doesn’t hide it, you know. But the second anyone tries to ask questions, he shuts them down.”

Bucky says nothing. He looks down at his hands.

“He smells like you too.”

“Nat, please.”

She sighs. Bucky doesn’t shrug off the arm she throws around his shoulder but doesn’t let her pull him closer. She scoots toward him instead, pressing her lithe body against his bulk. She doesn’t smell like anything. It’s not scent blockers. The Red Room didn’t leave any of its girls with a scent. After she’s spent hours skin-to-skin with them, Natasha smells a little like Clint and Laura. But even that’s quick to wash off her skin.

There’s a story there that Bucky doesn’t know, and he’s never going to ask.

“What did you two do to each other that’s got you two moping so bad?”

“We fucked,” Bucky says flatly.

Natasha doesn’t even indulge him with a reaction. She just waves a hand.

“I figured that out. And I know sex wouldn’t get to either of you this bad.”

“How well do you know him?” Bucky asks sharply.

“Well enough,” she says, voice bland in a studied way. “He’s a good man.”

Bucky doesn’t disagree. Why would he? It’s true. If Natasha’s surprised by his implied acquiescence, she doesn’t show it. Though Bucky’s not reassured by the faint smile at the corner of her mouth either.

“Ever occurred to you that I’m moping because my superiors fucked me over, and I got so pissed off that I almost quit?”

Her smile turns into a frown at that.

“I don’t know what Nick was thinking.”

“That Captain America’s a great asset and who needs morals anyway?” Bucky suggests.

“James,” she sighs, torn between amusement and admonishment. “I don’t know. I’m sorry he did that.”

“Yeah, well. A break can do me good, I guess. Bond’s fucking with me. I can feel him. All the time. It’s in my blood.”

Natasha gives him a curious glance but doesn’t push. It’s different for everyone. He’s heard that different bonds are different even for a single person. He thinks about Steve’s old bondmate, the one that put such a wistful smile on his lips, the one whose bond he lost, same as he’ll lose Bucky’s.

Except no, not quite. Bucky doesn’t mean anything to Steve. Even in those few seconds, it was clear that the bond Steve lost meant a lot.

Bucky should be glad that the one he’s set on breaking won’t also bring heartbreak with it, but the justification falls flat even in his own mind.

“Is he okay?”

The words slip out of him before he can stop himself. Natasha makes a soft, surprised noise.

“What?” he asks defensively.

“Nothing, it’s just—” She snorts and shakes her head. “He asked me the same thing about you.”

“Oh. What—what did you say?”

“Same thing I’m gonna tell you. A broken bond isn’t the end of the world. And he’s a survivor.”

There’s something deeper there, something she’s letting him see. Another story he’ll never ask about. But he leans into her more firmly and slides his arm across her back so the two of them are comfortably nestled together. She rests her head on his shoulder, and Bucky tilts his head onto hers.

“You know,” she says after a while, voice so low that Bucky has to strain to hear, “if you want, I’ve got a few things you can do. Not very legal but nothing worse than what S.H.I.E.L.D. usually has you doing.”

Bucky doesn’t even hesitate. He’s bored and desperate, and he trusts Natasha with his life. They call her a spider, and she is, but her webs can protect as fiercely as they cut.

“Who’d I be working for?” he asks.

“Me, mostly. I’m a good girl now, but I didn’t live this long being blindly faithful to my masters. I’ve got my side gigs. They’re harmless. Mostly.”

“I believe you.”

Natasha turns her head and laughs softly into the crook of Bucky’s neck.

“You do, don’t you. Alright, Barnes. Let’s put you to work.”

-

Natasha sends him globe-trotting, bundled up in so many layers of false identities that the sheer effort it takes to keep them all straight distracts Bucky from the live, writhing thoughts lashing at his mind.

Mostly.

His days are occupied with some mild spying here, some light breaking and entering there. Natasha was right; it is harmless. He’s not killing anyone, which is a pretty low bar to set, but it is what it is.

The nights though…

He hasn’t dreamed this much about anyone since he was a sophomore panting after the captain of the lacrosse team. He doesn’t even remember the guy’s name anymore, doesn’t remember much of anything except that he was a blond alpha. Two don’t make a pattern.

It would be unfair anyway to lump Steve in with that nameless kid. Steve occupies a category all his own.

Bucky tells himself it’s unreasonable to be so hung up on a guy he barely knows, but his own mind’s quick to argue that it’s not quite true, is it? He doesn’t not know Steve—he knows the brave leader, the rutting alpha, and the kind lover. It’s not all Steve is, he’s sure of that, but they’re important pieces of him, all of which Bucky got to know intimately.

He can’t just shake that off, least of all when Steve’s still singing in his veins.

He blames most of his obsession on the bond because it’s easier to blame hormones than think circumstances robbed him of someone he could have a bond with for real. He even believes it, most of the time.

-

His second pre-heat since the bonding finds him buzzing nervously his apartment, unable to settle for the life of him. He considers, once or twice, going out to some bar and picking up some alpha. Pre-heat and pre-rut make people quite popular in certain establishments, and Bucky’s got a list the size of his forearm of such places. It’s a little risky, but Bucky can crush most alphas’ skulls with one arm, so he’s not very worried about that.

It’s not so easy this time. An omega in pre-heat is one thing. A bonded omega in pre-heat is another entirely. He’ll probably still have takers, but the idea of navigating that minefield is…unappealing, to say the least. And there’s a not insignificant part of him that balks at the thought of fucking anyone who’s not Steve while wearing his scent. That wouldn’t be a problem if he didn’t genuinely like and respect the guy.

But it hurt _so much_ last time.

His pre-heat lasts days, longer and messier than usual. His temperature goes haywire; he’s shivering one moment and sweating through his blankets the next. He’s feverish and irritable and damn near wishing for the painful arousal of his heat.

He finds himself swiping a hand over his bonding scar and bringing it to his nose to drag in the faded wisps of Steve’s scent.

He wishes he at least got Steve’s number and curses himself for even thinking it.

They’re a few miserable days.

By the end of the fifth, Bucky’s too exhausted and miserable to bother with pretense.

He wants his alpha. He wants Steve.

-

The doorbell pulls him out of a restless sleep filled with dreams of bare skin and an elusive scent. He’s half hard, but the heat still hasn’t hit, so the arousal is only an annoyance.

He's just stumbled out of the bedroom, sloppily dressed, when the knocks start.

“I’m coming,” he yells, snarling.

The knocks stop. He can’t even guess which motherfucker’s bothering him today, and if it’s Natasha or Clint, Bucky swears he can’t be held responsible for—

Wide blue eyes stare at him from above flushed cheeks.

Steve reeks of pre-rut.

Bucky drags in a deep, helpless breath. The scent shudders down his skin, sinks into his bones, claws at his gut. His softening cock fills back up, throbbing in need, and Bucky sways against the doorframe as his hole becomes soaked between one breath and the next.

Steve takes a frantic step closer but doesn’t touch.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Bucky has enough sense to say, even as he reaches for Steve.

His fingers curl in a tight t-shirt soaked with sweat. Steve’s chest seems a mere second away from bursting free of the constraining fabric. But it holds when Bucky tugs him forward, and fuck, _why_ is Bucky tugging him forward—

“You shouldn’t be here,” he tells Steve again, and they’re so close now, Steve’s breath clogging up his veins, his breath hot on Bucky’s lips. All he’d have to do it just lean up a little and—

“I know,” Steve speaks before Bucky can do anything he might regret, but he sounds like he’s breaking apart at the seams, and Bucky’s going to do something he regrets anyway, he knows it. “I tried, I swear, I tried.”

“I believe you,” Bucky says, and he does because he thought of it too, hauling ass to the tower—chasing trouble, chasing Steve.

Steve presses closer, tree-trunk arms going around Bucky, gathering him up against the hulking mass of his alpha. It sets him on fire and makes him melt, heat sizzling in his gut, so close to eruption.

“Been in hell for days,” he gasps in confession, twisting his hands in Steve’s shirt, gulping in his scent. “Wanted you, couldn’t breathe for wanting you.”

Steve groans, pained and defeated, and Bucky echoes the sound. He steps back, and Steve shuffles forward, the two of them already tangled, limbs and scents and hearts.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says, and Bucky kisses it off his lips.

They stagger clumsily past the doorway. Steve kicks the door closed behind him. It clicks shut with resounding finality.

Heat spreads molten through his blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was originally going to end it here and leave this an open oneshot, but then I was attacked by the plot bunnies.
> 
> Let me know what you think <3


End file.
